Uncrewed cargo VTOL
Deliver cargo, deploy capability.
Carry a hundred-plus kilograms, fly hundreds of kilometers, land on pads, decks, or unprepared ground, and refuel in minutes.
What it does
Cargo, sensors, or a relay.
One airframe, adapted in the field for the mission at hand.
3D flyaround. 9.7 m across, tiltrotors, skids, and the planned cargo pod underneath.
Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom. Escape to release.Drag to orbit, pinch to zoom. Tap outside to release.
Cargo
Cargo carried pad to pad, in and out on site. A sealed bay takes up to 145 kg, or 115 kg at full range.
ISR & sensing
Observation held for hours on station. Sensors trade payload for distance: up to 1,908 km on extra tanks, sensors only.
Communications relay
A radio and satellite link held at altitude, moved when the work moves. It holds where the ground network is down or denied.
Flexibility
Trade payload for range.
Payload and range trade against each other. Set the load, read the range, and the mission picks the operating point.
Indicative, not a performance guarantee.
Fuel makes the trade possible: a battery weighs the same full or empty.
Why the powertrain is hybrid →The architecture
Three decisions, made in 2017.
The rest of the field is now converging on them. Each one below, and what it buys.
Independence from runways and airports lets the mission pick the site. Tiltrotors settled it in flight test: the rotors that lift tilt forward to cruise.
Fuel range, set by tank size, and a refuel in minutes. A generator makes the electricity in flight, so the battery covers only liftoff, transition, and landing.
Range comes from aerodynamics: once the aircraft is moving, the wing carries the weight far more efficiently than rotors can hold it up, so every liter goes further.
Economics
The lowest acquisition cost in vertical lift.
Payload times range is the number an operator's spreadsheet actually uses.
$ per kilogram-kilometer on an acquisition basis, at standard conditions. Peer figures are our own calculations from public information and internal research; Zuri figures from planned pricing.
¹ The battery-drone comparison is internal engineering analysis and crosses categories.
Why Zuri
Every alternative stops somewhere.
Each does part of this job well. None of the limits below is temporary.
A helicopter, by the hour.
Chosen for speed, and it takes a crew into the air to get there. Sending them carries high operating cost and human risk, so the mission must warrant both.
A boat or truck, in half a day.
Lower cost per kilogram than any aircraft, and slower than all of them. When the cargo holds up the work, price per kilogram is the wrong number.
A battery drone, at 30 kilograms.
That class flies about 16 kilometers where this work needs hundreds. An order of magnitude is not a gap engineering closes, and every route needs chargers at both ends.
Fuselage structure under assembly.
The foundation
Built on TD 2.0.
Everything Zuri has flown in the last decade, more than fifteen aircraft, converges in Technology Demonstrator 2.0: the airframe, the hybrid system, the control laws. The cargo aircraft is the same technology, built to fly missions instead of tests.
Zuri builds and supports it for the long term, on the foundation that carries everything after it.
The demonstrator, in depth →Reliability
Measured, not promised.
Dispatch rates and weather envelopes are earned in flight test, not written in brochures. What can be designed in from day one, is.
Margins are the spec
Every published range carries a full 30-minute reserve inside it: 569 km is the number with the margin already paid.
No single point of failure
Eight rotors and redundant fly-by-wire: controllable after losing a rotor; after a generator failure, the battery carries the landing.
No charging dependency
AVGAS, automotive gasoline, or bioethanol: refueled in minutes anywhere fuel can be trucked, with no charging window between sorties.
The envelope, published
Wind, visibility, and night limits come out of the TD 2.0 flight-test campaign as data. Zuri publishes what it measures.
Where the program stands
The full architecture is running together on the ground now. TD 2.0 flies before this aircraft ships, so the envelope this one inherits is measured, not modeled.
Sovereignty
European, by construction.
Designed and built in Prague on a sovereign European supply base: ITAR-free and NATO-interoperable, with suppliers named, not hidden.
Certification
Built for today's rulebook.
EASA Specific category, SORA-engineered, flown beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). Designed for EASA and FAA markets.
The category
EASA's Specific category: the operational rulebook for uncrewed aircraft, risk-assessed per operation under SORA at SAIL III. No passenger type certificate stands between this aircraft and revenue.
What it permits
Uncrewed cargo flights beyond visual line of sight, under an operational authorization tied to route and risk.
Who signs
National aviation authorities, under EASA's common rules. The Czech authority has known this company since its first registration in 2018.
Where first
Over-water and low-ground-risk routes: minimal exposure, the cleanest SORA cases, the fastest approvals.
What changes next
Authorizations follow the flight-test campaign; the timeline lives in the FAQ below.
Frequently asked questions
About the aircraft.
How does it work, in plain terms?
The cargo VTOL takes off and lands like a helicopter, from a pad, a deck, or open ground. Then the rotors tilt and it flies on the wing, like an airplane, and a wing carries weight far more efficiently than hovering rotors: that is where the range comes from. One operator flies it from the ground, and payload trades against distance per mission. Helicopter access. Fixed-wing range. Mission flexibility.
What is the aircraft allowed to fly today, and when does that change?
Today, nothing commercially. The Technology Demonstrator 2.0 flies first, planned for early 2027. Operations then come under EASA's Specific category with per-route operational authorizations, and first deliveries are planned in the 2027 to 2029 window. No passenger type certificate stands on this aircraft's path, which is why the timeline reads in years, not decades.
Can it fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)?
That is the whole design case. The aircraft is engineered for beyond-visual-line-of-sight operation under EASA's Specific category, assessed route by route through SORA and authorized by the national aviation authority for each operation. Zuri has worked with the Czech CAA since registering its first aircraft in 2018. BVLOS is not one permission granted once: it is a risk assessment per route, and over-water routes are the cleanest cases and approve fastest.
How does it handle weather?
Honestly: the weather envelope is defined in flight test, not in marketing. The design carries the margins from day one, a full 30-minute reserve inside every published range, redundancy past any single failure, and fuel that removes the charging window. The TD 2.0 campaign measures wind, visibility, and night limits, and Zuri publishes what it measures.
How is manufacturing quality assured?
Zuri is preparing for AS9100, the aerospace quality-management standard for design and manufacture, with completion planned for 2027. Design, build, and integration all run in-house in Prague, on one floor, so a change is drawn, made, and tested by the same team rather than crossing a supplier boundary. Every major system has a named supplier behind it, and the aircraft is built on a sovereign European supply base.
What does the aircraft cost?
Unit price is quoted per configuration and per operation, so it comes from a conversation rather than a price list: payload interface, sensing fit, spares and support all move it. What is public is the shape of it. Zuri is designing for the lowest acquisition cost in vertical lift, because the aircraft has no pilot to carry, no transmission, and no certification path priced like a passenger type certificate. Bring the route and the load and we will size it.
How can my organization engage before first flight?
Bring the mission: requirements conversations, route and payload studies, and early-operator agreements are open now. Not the decision maker? The one-page brief arms the one who is: the gate, the numbers, and the record. Write to us and we will answer within days.
Put it to work.
Tell us the route, the load, and the constraint: the conversation is open now.